NOTES. CXY11 



could be inferred. Nothing has ever been ejected from these craters but masses 

 of mud, elastic fluids, and glowing, more or less scorified, blocks of trachyte 

 which are often thrown to considerable distances." (Humboldt, Kleinere 

 Schriften, Bd. i. S. 200.) On the first origin of the opinion of the upheaval of 

 accumulations of solid masses, see Acosta in the Viajes d los Andes ecuatoriales, 

 por M. Boussingault, 1849, p. 222 and 223. In the opinion of this celebrated 

 traveller, the movements caused among these fragments by earthquake shocks 

 and other causes, and the gradual filling up the intervals between them must 

 occasion a gradual lowering of the heights of the mountains. 



( 4S1 ) p. 316. Humboldt, Asie Centrale, t. ii. p. 296301. (Gustav Rose, 

 Mineral-geognostische Eeise nach dem Ural, dem Altai und dem Kasp. Meere, 

 Bd. i. S. 599.) Long narrow walls or dykes of granite may have been raised 

 up over fissures in the earliest foldings of the earth's crust, analogous to those 

 remarkable ones which remain still open, which are found at the foot of the vol- 

 cano of Pichincha ; the " Guaycos " of the city of Quito, thirty or forty feet 

 broad. (See my Kl. Schr., Bd. i. S. 24.) 



( 45 -) p. 316. La Condamine, Mesure des trois premiers degre's du Me'ridien 

 dans rHe'misphere Austral, 1751, p. 56. 



( 453 ) p. 317. Neither Passuchoa, nor Atacazo, between which the Hacienda 

 el Tambillo intervenes, enters the limits of perpetual snow. The high margin 

 of the crater, la Peila, has fallen in on the western side, but shows itself on the 

 eastern as an amphitheatre. It is said in the country that, near the end of the 

 sixteenth century, Passuchoa which had been previously active ceased to be so 

 on the occasion of an eruption of Pichincha, and that the cessation has been 

 absolute and perpetual : confirming the existence of inter-communication be- 

 tween the opposite Eastern and Western Cordilleras. The proper basin of Quito, 

 closed in as by walls, towards the north by a mountain-knot between Cotocachi 

 and Imbaburo, towards the south by the Altos de Chisinche (between 20' N. 

 and 40' S. lat.), is for the greater part of its length divided in two by the 

 ridge of Ichimbio and Poingasi. To the east is the valley of Puembo and 

 Chillo, and to the west the plain of Inaquito and Turubamba. Proceeding from 

 north to south we have successively, in the Eastern Cordillera Imbaburo, the 

 Faldas de Guamani, and Antisana, Sinchulahua, and the perpendicular black 

 wall, crowned with tower-like elevations, of Ruminaui (stone-eye) ; and, in the 

 Western Cordillera Cotocachi, Casitagua, Pichincha, Atacazo, and Corazon, on 

 the slopes of which the magnificent Alpine flower, the red Ranunculus Gusmani, 

 flourishes. It has seemed to me suitable to give here, from personal observa- 

 tions, a brief description of this important and classic ground for volcanic geo- 

 logy. 



